Cherry St. Storage

From the blog 'Alphonsus's Written Word' - read the poem by clicking the picture

It seems self-serving to vent in public.  And it gets a little tiresome, I know.  But I’ll vent anyway, because someone out there may read this and agree, and feel grateful they are not alone, like I feel I am right now.

I am afraid…afraid of so many things.  Afraid of facing work.  Afraid of facing people.   Afraid of taking action.  Afraid of failure (and maybe success).  Afraid of people that aren’t afraid.  Afraid of the pace.  Afraid of the noise.  Afraid of rejection.  So afraid…

And I mad.  Mad at the human race.  Mad we have a ruling class.  Mad at the race we are conditioned to run. Mad at the glorification of wealth.  Mad at the loss of patience. Mad at the loss of common sense.  Mad at the loss of charity.  Mad at greed.  Mad at corporate myopia.  Mad at social myopia.  Mad at those that think it’s all so exciting.   So mad…

And I’m feeling hopeless.  I feel like an alien that does not speak the language, or understand the customs.  I stand back and stare and all I see is a giant aluminum mountain that I will never be able to scale.  I watch the world whizz by and all I catch are flashes of images.  I don’t live here anymore – I’ve been shut out.  It’s someone else’s club, and I’m not going to be a member.  Ever.

So…this is the 21st century.  I remember dreaming about whether I’d live this long to see it for myself – it all seemed so far-fetched back then in the 70s.  How could I know that people are idiots here?  Life is about consumption here?  That sanity lies only in rare pockets you search for?  That mainstream is a polluted river of bilge?

What I’d really like?  I’d like the stock markets to really crash hard, and take all those that got rich by making money on money down to the bottom.  I’d like the poor to crush all the top-tier executives – maybe that would shake greed out of our genes.  I’d like a really fucking impressive natural disaster to weed out all those self-centered, possession-hungry “I’m the majority” voters – they can’t be smart enough to deal with it.  Really, what I wish for, is someone to make the entire f-ing planet stop in its tracks and teach it peace and serenity and sanity.  I’m secretly hoping the Mayans have it right and we’re done for soon.

All I can say right now is I want out.  I like the planet a lot, but I’m done with this weed called ‘human’.  It’s choking out all the good things that live here, and I’m sick of its smell.  It’s not lost on me that I’ve just condemned myself in that thought, since I am part of that species.  All the same…I want out.

Fear + Anger + Hopelessness.  Not the equation that any Oprah-wannabe would think we’ve written, but that’s what I see.  And, honestly, it don’t add up to much.

Mahalo.

photo credit: BL1961

On the eve of my 45th birthday, I stop to consider how many times I want to check out of the human race.  The selfishness, the myopia, the steady decline of civility, the increase of stupidity… all of it makes me angry that I have to face it every day.  My weakness, it is, that I prefer solitude to engagement.  I’m working on that, but it doesn’t erase my reasons for wanting to stay away.

That being said, it’s when I look up at the night sky that I realize there is more to life than being human.  There are the millions of species other than homo sapien that call this planet home.  There are the hundreds of miles of ocean depth that have yet to be seen or understood.  There are probably more modalities of life than we can see that are living with us – they may even be laughing silently as we run ourselves to extinction.

But, more than all of that, I look up at night and realize how small it all is in the face to the infinity above.  We are a tiny speck of dust swimming in a  vast particle sea.  We are but fuzz on a single peach in an endless ocean of fruit.  Held against the backdrop of the universe, we do not even cast a shadow.

And, knowing that, the fear and anger this century brings me drops away, if just for a moment.  Because, in the final rinse, it means nothing.  Only I remain, and that’s enough.